10 Social Media Lessons You Can Learn from Cats

Here at WorkflowMax, we love our cats. Well, some people are more dog-people, but they don’t write the blog. Monica and I do. So that’s why you get articles like 10 Lessons These Cats Can Teach Us About Staying on Top of Deadlines, 7 Marketing Lessons Business Owners Can Learn from Grumpy Cat and 11 Project Management Lessons Learned from Cats.

Today, we take to the feline streets to find out what these savvy kitties have to say about managing your social media.

1. Choose the Right Platform

With so many different social media sites to choose from, it can be daunting to decide where to begin. It’s important you choose to focus on a site where your audience hangs out, and where they will appreciate your updates and awesomeness.

For example, fashion brands do well on Instagram, while B2B firms often find their tribe on Twitter. Every social media site has their targeted audience - choose the one that’s the best fit for your brand.

2. Play Up Your Strengths

By this I mean, don’t waste your time trying to copy your competitors. Instead, look at what you as a company and as a person do best, and focus your social media activity around that.

If you’re great at answering questions, then focus on Q&A-type content. If you’ve got someone on staff who is naturally funny and bubbly, then get them to tackle the social media. If your company has a reputation for being environmentally friendly, then make that a feature of your engagement.

3. Creating a Persona Helps You to Identify with Your Audience

Grumpy Cat is an internet sensation because she’s a persona many people can identify with. You can use this concept to create a persona for your company.

Think about the voice of your firm. Are you elegant, silly, serious, funky, timeless, motherly, sassy, or twee? See if you can create a whole personality for your brand with a unified voice across your social media. Even if several people manage your accounts, this unified voice/persona helps your customers to easily identify with you.

4. Post Stuff That’s Interesting

Engage your clients and customers with a range of interesting links, images, videos and graphics. You’re not on social media to shill your products/services, you’re trying to create a community and build brand loyalty.

Create a schedule and look for different types of content to fill that schedule. For example, if your company is going to post four times a day to Facebook, make one post a link to one of your recent blog articles, one post a news article about your company or industry, one post a funny picture or interesting article, and one post a time-wasting video from Youtube.

5. People Love to Talk About Their Opinions

Give your audience a voice on your social media. Ask random questions, get them to vote on their favourite product / colour / style, and ask for their opinions on certain topics and issues (although try to stay away from stuff like religion, race and politics). You audience loves to feel involved by giving their opinions!

6. Don’t Feed the Trolls

Any social media page that experiences some type of success will eventually be inundated with trolls. A “troll” is a term for a person who comments on your page with the specific purpose of stirring up trouble. They might try to turn every one of your posts into a racial or political debate, write offensive things about your company or other posters, or spam your page with their own rants.

The best piece of advice for dealing with trolls is to ignore them. Just like bullies on the playground at school, trolls thrive on the drama they create. Don’t give them a chance. Delete their comments, block their accounts and don’t engage with them in debate. You have a right to delete and moderate comments on your page.

Above all, remember not everyone will like what you do or say, and that’s completely OK. But keep the negativity off your own social media pages.

7. Provide Expert Advice

Help your customers make decisions and learn more about your products and services. Educating customers has several benefits: they are more likely to buy from you if they feel as though you’ve helped them make their decision, and they are more likely to become enthusiastic brand ambassadors. Use your social media to provide tips and tricks to help your clients/customers identify problems, make wise decisions, and get the most out of your products and services.

8. People Go on Social Media to Be Distracted. So Distract Them.

Give your audience what they want - tons of links, images, videos and graphics to explore, and a little distraction from their everyday life, every single day.

9. The Most Successful Social Media Sites Create a Community Hub

Bring your community together through shared activities, such as raising money for charity, crowdfunding awesome new products, or spreading the word about an awesome artist among their ranks.

Sometimes the most successful business social networks take a step back and allow the community to run the show. Get your audience to post images, moderate discussions and organise their own fan activities and meetups.

10. Spelling and Grammar Matter

You must always view your social media pages as an extension of your brand. Even though social media is a bit more “casual” than your official website, spelling and grammar mistakes are noted by your fans, and count against you. It’s OK for the odd mistake to get through (we’re all human), but frequent errors suggest you’re sloppy or that you don’t care about your audience.

If English isn’t your first language, you’re dyslexic, or you’re worried about errors, simply get someone else to check over your work before you hit publish.

What other social media lessons have you learned from fluffy animals?

Images from The Chive and The Hollywood Gossip